by Pam Godwin
I might’ve been seconds from passing out face down in a drool of contentment, but he’d more than earned a hard suck and swallow.
He gripped the base of his erection and stared down at me, his face glistening with a sheen of my come.
“You have a little something…” I directed my gaze at his mouth. “On your…” Jaw, lips, cheeks, everywhere. The sight was disturbing and so fucking erotic.
He swiped a finger across his chin and licked it clean, eyes closing and dark lashes flickering against his skin. “You taste like honey and ripe—”
“If you’re going to say—”
“Virginity.” His eyes flashed open, brighter and hotter than ever.
“Is that right?” I raised a brow. “You eat a lot of virgins?”
“No.” He angled his cock toward my mouth. “You’re my first, but don’t worry. Virginity is curable, and I intend to cure you in every way imaginable.”
His timbre enveloped me like a cold dark night as he slid his fist from root to tip, adding pressure toward the head. Beads of pre-come welled in the slit, and he smeared the salty fluid across my lips.
I opened my mouth. In surprise? Invitation? Certainly not to speak for I had no words.
His lips parted, fangs elongating, and gaze sparking with hellfire. A beast on the edge of starvation.
“When we get out of here…” He notched the head of his cock between my lips, his voice thick with arousal. “I’m going to keep you.”
Before I could argue about my place in the world, he dropped his hands to the floor above my head and thrust.
I gripped his ass, my fingers digging into stone as he worked his cock in my mouth, his strokes long and rhythmic. The groaning noises he made were enough to relight my weary fire and coax my tongue into action.
Flat on my back with him kneeling over my head and fucking my face was an unsettling position to be in. He could get carried away and pound my skull into the concrete. But he didn’t. The drive of his hips was softer this time, more careful and controlled, as if he knew exactly what he was doing.
He’s probably done this a thousand times.
“Cup my balls.” His command sounded like a plea, whispered on pained breath.
I shifted a hand around his thigh and reached between his legs from the front. Tentative at first, I slowly massaged his sac, feeling my way around the soft hairless skin and marveling at the weight and shape. Momentous discovery. Salem was full of them.
“Dawn…”
Looking up at his eyes, those electric silver eyes, I grunted a ‘uh? around the plunge of his cock.
“Tighten your fing—”
I squeezed.
“Ahhh.” His hips moved faster. “Fuck, yes, just like that.”
Emboldened, I moved my free hand to the base of his shaft. With a tight fist, I jacked him off while sucking and licking the broad head. He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, his chest heaving and thighs shaking. Oh, he liked that?
His thrusts slowed to lazy nudges, and for a moment, I thought he was going to hold still and let me take over.
Braced on an arm above my head, he reached down with the other hand and curled his fingers over mine. Then he showed me what he wanted—a tighter grip, twisting strokes, hard tugs—all while I cupped his balls and sucked on the tip. I think I got it.
His hand returned to the floor above my head. The muscles in his abs bunched and rippled as he held himself immobile, mouth parted, watching me with a nerve-wracking amount of intensity.
“You look so fucking sinful with your lips around me.” His hand moved to the suction of my mouth, and he trailed a knuckle over the hollow of my cheek. “Most beautiful view I’ve ever seen.” His eyes lost focus, his expression tightening. “I’m going to come, baby.”
I moaned and sucked harder, twisting my wrist and kneading his balls. He roared, every inch of him turning to steel as he spilled down my throat. I stared up at him with a smile in my eyes and swallowed every drop.
His cock slid out, replaced with his lips in a blur of movement. His naked body covered mine, breaths ragged, as he ate at my mouth. He kissed me deeply, tenderly, straight into a dead-to-the-world coma.
I woke sometime later to the amplified sound of his blood pumping. At some point while I’d slept, he’d pulled on his black cotton pants, but I was still naked, wrapped in warm furs and Salem.
Lifting my cheek from his chest, I wasn’t surprised to find a tracery of glowing veins in his neck and torso. I glanced at the door, certain our captors were headed our way.
“Food’s coming.” I stroked my hand over the vascular pattern of interlaced branches around his heart, mesmerized by the brightening blood flow and the metallic substance worming through it.
Voracious heat pierced through my stomach and stirred through the roots of my teeth. I craved him, his blood, but until I understood what was happening, I wasn’t going to mention it to him.
He glanced down at his chest. “You see my veins?”
“Yeah, but…” With each caress, the arteries pulsed harder, brighter, gravitating closer to his skin and reaching for my hand. I coasted my fingers down his torso and produced the same effect everywhere I touched. “Can you feel that?”
“Feel what?” He watched my hand with an absorption that illuminated his eyes.
“I can see those silver ribbony things in your blood. I hear your circulation, and when I…” I skimmed my hand across his chest, awe-struck by a bizarre feeling of power. “When I do this, your veins flutter and stretch upward, like a…magnet? I can’t sense them by touch, but holy shit, Salem. How can you not feel that?”
An electric buzz sounded, and the steel door slid slowly into motion.
His wide-eyed gaze flew to mine. He almost looked…scared. Not of the door. Scared of me?
He jerked out from under me and rolled me to my back. “Pretend you’re sick. Dying,” he whispered at my ear. Then he rushed for the door.
CHAPTER TEN
Pretend you’re sick. Dying.
Eyes closed, I lay still on the pallet of bedding and produced the best weak sounding moan I could muster. If our captors believed the ruse and wanted me alive, they’d rush in, right? My muscles tensed to fight.
“Come back! She’s sick!” Salem rattled the gate. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” The sound of his pacing footsteps drifted across the floor. “She’s vomiting. High fever. Convulsions. I don’t know. She’s not lucid. I think it’s the bite on her leg. It looks infected.”
My thigh twitched, but the wound felt fine. It seemed to be healing properly.
The door buzzed, the gears kicked in, and the groan of steel sliding back in place marked a wasted effort.
His breathing picked up, and the gate clanked against whatever part of him he slammed into it. “Don’t fucking leave me in here with a rotting corpse!”
Not a thought I wanted to entertain. I peeked an eye open and craned my neck.
He angrily grabbed the waiting cardboard of food and yanked it into the room. When the door sealed shut, I pulled on my shorts, tied the band of suede around my breasts, and slipped into the bathroom to brush my teeth. As I spit the baking soda in the sink, he approached my back.
His hand roamed down my spine with familiarity, and his other plucked the toothbrush from my fingers. Neither of us spoke while he cleaned his teeth. We settled on the pallet of bedding and ate in silence. Roasted beets, some kind of fire-grilled game, and bottled water. At least they fed us well, but I didn’t taste the food. I felt numb.
I finished my portion of the meal, telling myself we would break out. Some way or another, I’d see my fathers again.
“Before the door opened,” I said, “you looked scared. Why?”
He stroked a finger along his eyebrow, studying me. “You said you can make my veins…flutter? That’s pretty alarming, Dawn, because I don’t feel shit.”
I broke eye contact and pressed my lips together.
“Hey.” He touched
my chin and lifted my face to his. “You don’t scare me. You made my veins move. I’m still alive. We’re good.”
“Good isn’t the word I’d use.” I pointed a look around our cell.
“Tell me something.” He pulled me across his lap, covered our legs with the bedding, and leaned against the wall. “Something personal.”
“Personal?” Sitting sideways on his thighs, I rested my head on his shoulder. “Like what?”
“I don’t know.” He pinched a lock of my hair and coiled it around his finger. “Tell me about someone you care about, your greatest joy, your happiest and worst memories. Tell me anything.”
I drew a breath as my mind darted to the one thing that encapsulated his list. “I had a dog.”
“A dog?” His hand stilled in my hair. “The dog?”
“Darwin. I assume you heard stories.”
“I heard about a German Shepherd that saved your mother from starvation, aphids, werewolves, and led your fathers to her prison in Hoover Dam.”
“Werewolves?” I laughed. “It was a lion.”
“Is the dog…?”
“He died.” August 15 at 6:10 AM. Just as the sun rose over Hoover Dam. “I was ten. We were alone on our morning walk through the garden, the one where my mother died.”
“The legendary place of your birth.”
I nodded, my chest squeezing. “He hobbled over to the spot where she…” I cleared my throat. “The residents built a memorial in the garden where she passed. There’s a fountain and benches. A wooden statue carved in her image, surrounded by flowers and keepsakes—blades, figurines, jewelry, things that people, vagabonds from across the country, have made for her in veneration of her life.”
Uncomfortable with the wavering sound of my voice, I rubbed a hand on my thigh and pulled in a steadying breath.
He wove his fingers around mine. “You grew up there? At the dam?”
“Near there. My fathers had a yacht on Lake Mead, a few minute’s ride by speedboat. But as I got older, we spent more time at the dam and less time on the yacht. Scarcity of fuel made transportation harder, and all my friends and teachers lived within those walls. So when I was nine, we made a permanent move to the dam. Darwin died a year later.”
“Old age?”
“Yeah. He…” My breath shuddered as old wounds pulled open. “He went silently, sweetly. Just walked over to the statue of Eve and lay down, eyes closed with his gray muzzle resting on the statue’s carved feet. It was perfect, really. The sun was just rising. The air was warm and scented with blooming flowers. And I was with him, stroking his head as his last breath slipped away.” I attempted a small smile, but my eyes burned, blurring with moisture.
Salem’s thumb caught a tear that sneaked down my cheek. Then he cradled my face between his hands and rested his forehead against mine.
“My fathers…they…when they showed up, it was horrifying to watch.” I curled my fingers around his wrists. “It was the only time I’ve ever seen them cry.”
My fierce, intimidating protectors. Bent over in devastation. Eyes swollen, shoulders hunched, clinging to one another as if they were reliving my mother’s death all over again.
Salem held me against his chest and stroked my hair. Long minutes whispered by before he spoke. “I had a friend. He was like a father to me.”
I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, longing to glimpse something vulnerable in this confident, dangerous man.
“His name was Wyatt. One of Elaine’s countless lovers.” Salem fidgeted with a knot in the furs. “He was different from the others. Protective. Kind. Fatherly.” The last word was a raw whisper, full of hurt and resentment.
I was afraid to ask, but the pinned line of his lips suggested he wouldn’t continue.
“What happened to him?” I leaned closer and touched the hard line of his jaw.
“Elaine killed him. Cut his throat in his sleep.” His expression was blank, his voice monotone. “She didn’t like the attention he gave me. I should’ve ended the jealous bitch then, but I was only eight. Too young to survive on my own.”
Yet he’d killed her when he was twelve? Still too young to be an orphan in a vicious, desolate world.
“I’m so sorry.” I offered him the same compassion he’d given me, my forehead against his, my fingers stroking his neck. Then I kissed his lips and leaned back. “When you were twelve—”
“Enough about Elaine.”
Okay, fine. I wouldn’t push. For now.
He regarded me in a stretch of silence, his eyelids descending lazily over dilated pupils. “Your lips are stained red, like…blood.”
I touched my mouth. The beets. Then I touched his. Not a tinge of red in sight. “How long can you go without blood?”
“Depends.” His tongue darted out and licked my fingertip.
“On?” I pulled my hand back and shifted on his lap.
“Exertion. Loss of my own blood. Sex.”
I suddenly felt the urge to scoot away, but that was ridiculous, given my hungry curiosity for the topic of conversation. “Sex?”
“I can’t fuck without biting.”
“Can’t?” I narrowed my eyes. “Or won’t?”
“Can’t. I have immaculate control of my appetite. Except when I smell blood.” His voice dropped to a vibrating rumble. “And during sex.”
I glanced at my injured leg covered in furs and returned to him. “Do you drain your…fuck buddies?”
“Never.”
So a sip then? That was how my fathers fed on one other. In the privacy of their bedroom. I wrinkled my nose at the thought of them in the heat of the moment. Not an image any daughter wants to have of her parents.
Effectively turned off, I climbed to my feet and rolled my neck. “Wanna spar?”
I needed to keep my strength honed and my mind focused, because eventually we would bust out of here, and when we did, it would no doubt be a fight to the death.
“Spar?” A devilish grin swept over Salem’s face. “Ready to cry your pretty eyes in defeat?”
“Pfft.” I shook out my arms and flexed my hands. “You’re going down.”
He tilted his head, smiling. “In what world do you think you can beat me?”
“In the world of badass women, lover boy. I’ll give you a tour.” I crooked a finger at him. “On your feet.”
Our sparring session lasted five minutes, and I was certain he gave me those minutes out of the hustling depths of his heart. The joke was on me, because the moment he decided to end it, I was chest down, nose smashed against the concrete, with my hands pinned behind my back. He hadn’t even broken a sweat, where as I was soaked to the bone. In that way, he was just like my fathers. They never let me win.
But it was a productive way to whittle away time. So over the next few days, we sparred often. We also worked out. Crunches, lunges, sit-ups. Salem found great pleasure in using my body to do his bench-pressing and curls, the show off.
The meals arrived on a rotation, every ten to twelve hours. We experimented each time with his veins, testing the way they fluttered beneath my hand and stretched toward my movements. He seemed frustrated by the fact that I could see a part of him he couldn’t. Or maybe he was just frustrated in general. He never got his flask of liquor, and our captors never spoke or showed themselves. It was as if we were imprisoned by ghosts.
We showered daily and washed our scraps of clothes with a shrinking bar of soap. I used the bar sparingly, fretting over the inevitability of having nothing to clean with. It was such an inconsequential worry in the scheme of things. But being confined to a concrete room made a person stew about all kinds of shit.
Salem stewed about the hybrid children he’d killed, but not in a regretful way. He was contemplative and curious, sharing his speculation that they’d come from the breeding facility I’d infiltrated the day I was captured. It made sense. There had been no babies or children there. They had to have gone somewhere—somewhere close like this mansion, given the harsh Yukon cli
mate.
I spoke often of Eddie’s mother, Shea, regaling Salem with stories about her spitfire personality. She’d been my mother’s best friend and raised me as one of her own. I loved her the way I loved her son—deeply and unconditionally. My mood darkened when I thought about Shea, Eddie, and my fathers, but Salem always seemed to notice, redirecting the conversation in a lighter direction.
We slept a lot. The dungeon chill chased us beneath the furs with our bodies pressed together, seeking each other for warmth. Sleeping with him in such an intimate embrace was hell on my emotional fortitude. I held up those walls of distrust to protect myself, but hour by hour, day after day, he butted his sexy self into the cracks of my fracturing defenses.
I blamed my weakness on his mastery of my body. He knew how to kiss me, touch me, and make me crazy and stupid with need. He brought me to climax every waking hour like it was his mission in life. We showered. We ate. Then his mouth was on me again. But he didn’t fuck me, no matter how many times I begged. It was baffling, unexpected, and motherfucking frustrating.
It put me in a brooding flux of introspection. If I removed sex and captivity from the equation, how did I feel about him? I spent a lot of time waffling between being narrow-minded, open-minded, and a million minds about it. But the truth was I liked him. I’d certainly grown dependent on his company. Even more troubling, I realized I cared about him on a terrifyingly soulful level.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked ten days later.
Ten days was our estimate based on the number of cardboard trays accumulated beneath the sink.
He stood before me, head lowered, eyes up and firmly fixed on mine. His shoulders were back, arms at his sides, his stance powerfully fierce, and his expression ten shades of smug after just handing me my ass in a wrestling match.
“I know you want me.” I circled him, panting through labored breaths. “You’ve been hard as a rock for ten days.” I stopped in front of him and glared at the ever-present erection tenting his pants. “What gives?”
